1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an apparatus for side pressing surgical needles. More particularly, the present invention relates to an apparatus for sequentially positioning and side pressing curved surgical needles.
2. Description of the Related Art
The production of needles involves many processes and different types of machinery in order to prepare quality needles from raw stock. These varying processes and machinery become more critical in the preparation of surgical needles where the environment of intended use is in humans or animals. Some of the processes involved in the production of surgical grade needles include, inter alia: straightening spooled wire stock; cutting needle blanks from the wire stock; providing a bore for receiving suture thread at the other end of the blank; tapering or grinding points on one end of the blank; flat pressing a portion of the needle blank to facilitate easier grasping by surgical instrumentation; and curving the blanks where curved surgical needles are desired. To further facilitate grasping of the needle blank by surgical instrumentation and to facilitate insertion into humans or animals, a body portion of the curved needle blank may be side pressed.
Conventional needle blank processing is, in large part, a labor intensive operation requiring highly skilled labor. Generally, extreme care must be taken to ensure that only the intended working of the needle blank is performed and the other parts of the needle blank remain undisturbed. For example, conventional flat pressing techniques create the flat edges on the body portion of the needle blank by pressing the needle blank between a pair of opposing needle dies having the desired length and width characteristics. Typically, the needle blanks are manually placed on a lower die and compressed between the dies to impart the flat surfaces. The flat pressed blanks are then manually removed from the dies and deposited into a storage receptacle for distribution to another production machine.
As noted above, to facilitate grasping of the needle and insertion into body tissue, after flat pressing and curving, the needle blank is then side pressed to obtain a substantially rectangular cross-section in the needle body. As with the above flat press process, conventional side pressing techniques require manual insertion of the blank between a pair of dies which are caused to impact and compress the sides of a body portion of the needle blank opposite to those surfaces which were flat pressed to form the substantial rectangular cross-section in the needle body.
One disadvantage of conventional needle forming techniques is that curved needles are manually positioned between pressing dies for side pressing a portion of the needle body. For example, should any needles be improperly positioned within the dies they will become deformed rendering the needles unsuitable for their intended use. In such instances the deformed needles are discarded or reprocessed. The incidence of needle damage during the forming process has been relatively high due to the manual placement of the needles within the various machinery resulting in a relatively high percentage of deformed and rejected needles.
One type of apparatus utilized to present curved needles for side pressing is described in commonly assigned U.S. patent application Ser. No. 07/959,050 to Michael W. Bogart and Richard J. Smith, filed Oct. 9, 1992. In this application, curved needle blanks are vertically and horizontally orientated between a pair of dies which are activated to advance relative to each other to strike the blank. Vertical and horizontal pusher members are used to transport and orientate the needle blanks between the dies.
The present invention relates to a new and inventive apparatus for precisely positioning curved needles for side pressing and for subsequent deposit into a storage receptacle. The needle positioning and pressing apparatus of the present invention automatically transports curved surgical needle blanks between a grasping position and a pressing position, side presses a portion of the curved needle and subsequently deposits the side pressed needle blank into a storage receptacle for distribution to other needle blank manufacturing machinery.